I COULD fill the whole column this week with delights and reflections from a New Yorker piece about a Pentecostal leader in Brazil who is accused of suborning six of her 52 children to murder her husband, but I will try to confine myself to the essentials of the story when I get to it.
First, the upcoming schism in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is the largest single denomination in most of the United States. It seems to have been a casualty of Trumpism, in that the previous conservative hegemony was supplanted by a hard-right bloc. The Wall Street Journal reported that “even as their political power grew, Southern Baptist membership rolls, like those of many religious groups in the U.S., have been shrinking.
“The denomination, which is 90% white, is also aging, and the close association with the Trump administration exacerbated generational and ideological divides. Southern Baptist leaders have been trying to win younger and more diverse members. But while younger evangelicals are still conservative, studies show they are more racially diverse, more likely to support rights for LGBT people and immigrants, and less supportive of Mr. Trump and his politics.
“No religious group skews older than white evangelicals, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: Just 11% of white evangelical adults are aged 18 to 29, while 60% are 50 or older.”
This age profile is alarmingly similar to that of the Church of England. Of course, the SBC is a much more coherent political force. But it will be extraordinary and rather wonderful if the future of American Evangelicalism is less racist.
AND so to the Brazilian Pentecostalist Congressperson who — whatever other crimes she may have committed — has not, she says, violated parliamentary rules.
Flordelis, as she is known in the manner of Brazilians so famous that they have only one name, fought her way up from poverty to have a seat in the country’s Congress and six churches of her own, along with a career as a gospel singer. She became famous by adopting street children.
It seems that only three of the 52 children she claims were her own biologically; in any case, motherhood has not made her matronly. Jon Lee Anderson, who wrote the New Yorker piece, describes his first audience with her: “As we talked, Flordelis appeared in the doorway. A petite, dark-skinned woman, she wore a bold-patterned dress and a leather belt, and her hair swept down one shoulder in a ponytail. With a wide smile, she moved languidly from man to man, imparting kisses and coquettish looks. At her urging, we went from the crowded terrace and into her bedroom.
“Flordelis had a king-size bed, with a white leatherette headboard and a scarlet spread embroidered with satin ribbons. She climbed on and propped herself up next to a large white Teddy bear, while her bodyguard sat protectively on a child’s bed nearby . . . everyone fell silent as she proceeded, for the next two and a half hours, to tell her life story.”
And people say that women have no agency within the Pentecostal movement. Even by the end of the 10,000-word piece, it was unclear to me why she should have had her husband, Anderson do Carmo de Souza — 16 years younger than her — murdered in a particularly brutal fashion (she was charged in 2020 with orchestrating his murder, which she denied): his body had more than 30 bullets in it, most concentrated around his genitals; but the motive that the prosecution suggests is lust for power, as he was also her manager and fixer. In any case, she is obviously a woman capable of anything.
Nor is her church any more conventional than her family life. Even though her congregation, once 1500, is now down to 30, she still keeps up appearances: “In front of the stage were a pair of chairs decorated to look like thrones; one was hers, and the other had been Anderson’s. Flordelis knelt before them and prayed. Then she mounted the stage, set her cell phone on top of an arched golden lectern, picked up a microphone with a diamanté handle, and began to sing. . . After a half-dozen songs, Flordelis left the stage and sat in her throne. As she checked her phone, a man onstage asked for donations.”
The bling reminds me of one Donald Trump’s more self-aware remarks: that he was a poor person’s idea of how a rich person ought to live. In societies as unequal and stratified as contemporary Brazil or medieval England, it is quite possible that a peasant who saw a prelate on their throne did not see him as yet another bloodsucking oppressor, but as a powerful person who was on their side, who might fight the opposing powers on their behalf.
It is only after several generations of democracy that this kind of deference wears off — if it ever does. Of course, the reverence lasts only as the power does, and hers is rapidly diminishing.
Under Brazilian law, she has immunity from criminal charges for as long as she remains in Congress: “Now, on top of everything else, politicians were taking action against her. ‘They’ve asked for my impeachment,’ she complained. ‘But that’s unconstitutional, because I did not break any parliamentary decorum.’”
